I’m also leaving ScienceBlogs, but it’s not for the reasons some others have given. I don’t think Pepsi’s blog will hurt my real life reputation and besides, it’s been pulled, there have been apologies – it’s time to forgive. July was the first month I’ve gotten enough hits to get a paycheck – and that’s completely due to the BYU video – no one is more shocked than I about that. It’s also not about the technical support – I mean, look at my old blog. Does it look like I use fancy tricks? Some of the tech support things are related to getting thousands of comments, which I don’t. Of course I like some of the folks on here more than others, but that’s typical. I certainly didn’t like all of my shipmates in the Navy and I don’t like all of my co-workers (well, actually, I’m extremely lucky there) – but I get along. The communication has sucked and that has been really confusing, but a lot of that is getting straightened out now.

I was very flattered to receive the offer to blog here, but I didn’t accept immediately. On the positive side, I wanted to be able to communicate with scientists, particularly science bloggers. I study how scientists can use new communication tools and this sort of makes me a participant-observer. I also wanted to be in a group – it’s nice to be part of something, particularly something as cool as ScienceBlogs. I was worried, however, about any conflicts that might arise and if some anti-scibling scientists would *not* talk to me or would treat me differently because I was on the network. I was also worried about feeling pressure to do the shenanigans necessary to get a ton of traffic.

Those negative things never happened. Everyone’s been very welcoming – particularly the people who have left

Unfortunately, members of the Society of Scholarly Publishing and other people have used my SciBling status, and the fact that it’s a for-profit company and I could be getting paid, to dismiss my words – both at in-person conferences and online. The vendors I work with in the information industry listen to these guys over me. Even if they are completely wrong.

But I’ve been shrugging that off for a while – anyone who has asked a scibling knows we have complete editorial control. If you look at my old posts on Blogger and this year’s here, you’ll see that they’re basically the same.

The real thing is that I would like the community with a little less dysfunction and without being connected to a for-profit company. I’d like to be in a co-operative in which the members work together to resolve any differences. This is why I’ve moved to Scientopia. I hope you’ll follow me there.

Once again, I want to thank all of the great people at Seed. Thank you for having me, I’ve had a good time. Thank you all for welcoming librarians here – that includes the readers as well as the other bloggers. I wish ScienceBlogs the best – I think these tough times will leave the core group stronger and will bring about some much needed changes going forward.

Comments

I believe they’ll stay here. I’ve also imported them at my new home, http://scientopia.org/blogs/christinaslisrant, just in case. I don’t know if/when I’ll stop having access here, so I’ll probably shut down comments shortly.